Never would I have thought the air able to bear the weight of so many smells and noises. From Peshawar to where I was now, near Rawalpindi, western Pakistan had struck me as a land bound by the ugliest of poverty, and yet filled with the colors of a thousand springtime mountain meadows. All across it had been what I liked to think of as the singers, wailing the Koran from lotus-shaped mosque towers, chanting their lessons in overcrowded classrooms, and hawking their gold, silk, or rotting fruit from inside seedy, closet-sized shops. And there were the dancers: as numerous as atoms they twisted, rolled, squirmed, bobbed, and side-stepped from one spot to another. Most were dressed in turbans and had mustaches. Many were young. The women peered over veils with eyes as seductively beautiful as those which earlier civilizations graced their goddesses. Nearly all seemed so happy to be swirling with life's forces. -- Worldwalk book, pgs. 386-87